Wireless at the Nanoscale: Toward Magnetically Tunable Beam Steering

Plasmonic wireless nanolinks hold great promise to overcome limitations from conventional metallic wires, namely, narrow bandwidths, Ohmic losses, dispersion, and cross-talking. However, current developments are limited to the wireless communication between two fixed points, i.e., a fixed transmitter with a fixed receiver, which in turn limits the energy efficiency and integration levels. In this work, we propose the use of magnetic fields for the active tuning of the radiation beam steering of plasmonic nanoantennas. The physical principle behind our concept is shown with a rigorous solution of the radiation pattern of a radiating dipole source in the presence of magnetic fields. The results indicate that the proposal of this work is feasible with magnetoplasmonic nanoantennas, which can be fabricated using available ferromagnetic materials.